12 years ago – Slope of Hope with Tim Knight

Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

In Praise of Slope Contributors

By Tim Knight - 12 years ago (15, Aug 2012 9:43:53 PM)

Before trundling off to my nighttime reading, I just wanted to say thank you to all the folks who regularly contribute to Slope as guest writers. Off the top of my head, these include Springheel Jack (our early morning companion from across the pond), Strawberry Blonde, Ryan Mallory, TNRevolution, Gary Tanashian, BBFinance, BDI, Mark St.Cyr………and I'm sorry for not remembering more, but it's late.

These folks do Slope a world of good. Their contributions bring more variety to the blog; they keep the place more content-rich; they give us all good ideas and new insights; and, from my selfish point of view, they give me breathing room to see my family now and then.

I am genuinely, truly grateful to everyone who contributes – – and if you've been wanting to write for Slope, feel free to drop me a line. The payment will be as awesome as everyone else receives (specifically, the gratitude of Slopers, including myself). Long story short – – I deeply and genuinely appreciate what the other authors on this blog contribute.

The “Rush to Crush” Volatility

By Strawberry Blonde - 12 years ago (15, Aug 2012 5:17:19 PM)

The two Weekly ratio charts below depict the SPX vs VIX and the RUT vs RVX.

Very simply, you can see that each rally made by these two Indices since the lows of three years ago has produced an increasingly steep advance before it pulled back. The current rally from the June lows of this year is almost starting to exhibit a "parabolic" steepness to it. It may run for awhile yet before potentially plunging. However, volumes these past couple of weeks has been very low, and whether this is a precursor to a change in trend remains to be seen.

Price on both charts has reached the top of a channel. The current rally may have run out of steam, and we may see price either pull back or consolidate at the highs to produce more of the same kind of roller coaster intraday activity that we've seen recently. Alternatively, we could see an acceleration of the rally to an even greater parabolic steepness, but I would expect that higher volumes would have to enter these markets to produce this kind of scenario. Near-term support levels are 95.00 on the SPX:VIX and 40.00 on the RUT:RVX.

These are important ones to watch over the coming days/weeks, particularly in the run-up to the Jackson Hole Symposium from August 30th to September 1st, and the FOMC Meeting results and Fed Chairman's press conference on September 13th (as well as the Eurogroup Meetings on September 15th and the European Council Finance Ministers Meeting on September 16th).

Lazy Trade Long & Short: ARUN & DNKN (by Ryan Mallory)

By Tim Knight - 12 years ago (15, Aug 2012 2:25:58 PM)

Just as I'm writing this post, I got in Aruba Networks at $16.79. The ideal breakout level is at $16.76, which is where it just dropped back down to. I really wasn't planning on increasing my exposure to the long side today, because of the belief we might see a short-term pullback, so as a result, I'm going to cut one of my other longs that I still have. It'll likely be AIG, which has some nice gains, but not a stock, I want to hold much longer anyways.

The short comes from Dunkin' Brands (DNKN) – yes the Donuts company. They've seen a nice sell-off lately, and look like they are setting up for another move lower as a result with the bear-flag formation it is currently in.

Here's is today's lazy-trades.

LONG: Aruba Networks (ARUN)